by Dudley Pope
Jackson had slowed down to let him catch up.
"The fork's about thirty yards ahead, sir."
Ramage waited while the two files of men caught up and stopped.
The land on the left of the track sloped gently upwards towards the saddle; on the right it was level.
He decided to put the Marines farther along the track, nearer the village, so that the Spaniards passed them on their way to the trenches and were captured by the seamen. The advantage was that if the Spaniards bolted from the seamen's ambush, they'd run back along the track towards the village and be trapped by the Marines. Would the Marines have enough discipline to let the Spaniards pass the first time without opening fire? With Yorke and Bowen among them he knew he could depend on it. He explained it to Yorke and the corporal, and then they filed off into the deep greyness.
Ramage was pleasantly surprised at how quietly they moved: they were out of earshot almost as soon as they were lost to sight. The Marines, like the seamen, would stay on the left, or western side of the road. That way each would know roughly where the other force was and, more important, neither would fire - if shooting was necessary - towards the hill.
Quickly he and Jackson led the seamen into the bushes and positioned each of them two or three yards back from the track. Each was shown where the man on either side was stationed; each was warned what could happen if anyone forgot.
Finally Ramage walked along the track with Jackson to take up his position. He found a large, straggling divi-divi bush which would hide both him and Jackson, and sat down, sore-footed and tired, with the American beside him. He took one of the two pistols from his belt and, after checking it was not loaded, squeezed the trigger to make sure the flint was sound. It made a good spark. From his coat pocket he brought a metal powder horn and shook a measure of coarse powder into the barrel, using the rammer to push down a wad on top of it. Then he took a lead ball from his pocket and turned it between finger and thumb to make sure it had no dents or bumps, that it was perfectly spherical and would fly true. He put the ball in the muzzle and rammed it home firmly with another wad on top. Finally, using the fine powder at the other end of the divided powder horn, he held the pistol tilted to the left and shook a small amount of powder into the pan. Carefully he made sure the touch hole running from the pan into the bore of the gun was full of priming powder, and then flipped the steel down to cover the pan. He blew gently to get rid of loose grains of powder, and put it on the ground beside him while he loaded the other pistol.
Finally, with both pistols loaded, he was able to relax. It needed only a slight movement of each thumb to cock the hammers; it needed only a gentle pressure on the trigger to fire.
As they sat there, cautiously and silently fighting off attacks by the now only too familiar red ants, whose bites were like jabs from red-hot needles, Ramage and Jackson looked along the track, watching as approaching dawn extended the visibility. They could identify a particular bush five yards away, and then within minutes distinguish details of its leaves and branches. The overall grey of land and sky began to turn into pale but individual colours: the yellow blossoms of a shrub here, white blossom of a different shrub there. The green of odd blades of coarse grass, then the deeper green of bushes.
Jackson nudged Ramage's knee, and then Ramage too heard a distant clink of metal and voices; faint but deep, a descant even, and musical like distant murmurings. He realized it was the sound of slaves quietly singing and chanting as they walked.
He felt no tension now, only relief that his decision to believe the slave Roberto was likely to prove a right one. Now the only risk was that they'd arrive at the ambush before there was enough light to see properly.
Jackson seemed to guess his thoughts, whispering: "The track slopes downhill for a mile, sir. That's why we can hear them so well. They won't be here for fifteen or twenty minutes."
It seemed a long, long wait as it became gradually lighter. Ramage was surprised how noisily he breathed. On board the ship he had not noticed it, but out here, in the dawn silence, the air seemed to hiss and snort as it went up and down his nostrils. He tried breathing only through his mouth, but his throat began to dry and he was afraid of starting to cough. His heart seemed to be beating abnormally loudly. His stomach gurgled. The devil take it, was his body always as noisy as this?
The singing had faded for a few minutes and he worried in case the Spanish officer was taking the men to a new site, but Jackson explained that the silence was due to the road curving as it came up the hill, and masking the sound. Then Ramage could hear them again, suddenly louder.
Quickly he stood up with a pistol in each hand, and a moment later heard twigs breaking to his right: a careless seaman, but no matter; the singing of the Negroes should help drown any such noise.
Then he swore under his breath as he remembered he hadn't warned the seamen that he would challenge the Spaniards in Spanish: he suddenly had a mental picture of the seamen firing at the source of any Spanish voice.
Jackson, sensing his sudden tension, whispered a question and Ramage explained.
"It's all right sir," the American said, "I told them before we left the camp."
Ramage felt both relief and irritation - the American seemed to think of everything.
The Negro singing became louder and Ramage could see a cluster of men walking along the track towards him, three or four abreast, not in formation. The nearest were wearing hats - Spanish soldiers. After a gap, two or three men, then another gap. They were spread out over a much longer distance than that covered by the seamen; a column twenty yards long. The seamen were spaced a yard or so apart. He should have thought of that...
It was not yet fully daylight. Dawn had reached that deceptive stage when small boulders seemed large, bushes took on the shape of mythological beasts and all clouds looked stormy.
He had made the mistake so it was up to him to sort it all out...
And here came the first men ... twenty yards ... fifteen ... two tall and one short ... ten yards ... muskets over their shoulders, strolling rather than marching ... five yards...
Ramage stepped out in front of them, a pistol in each hand. His stomach shrivelled ... it seemed to be so vulnerable. A man behind the leaders might fire at them with a pistol.
The leaders stopped suddenly, startled. Their bodies seemed frozen as if each had managed to stop just in time to avoid treading on a snake and was now too frightened to move.
Those behind bumped into each other; a querulous voice said: "Que pasa?"
Ramage spoke in Spanish clearly and sharply.
"Let no one move. A hundred English guns are pointing at you from the bushes. Let the teniente come to the front!"
Nothing happened.
A Negro moaned; an eerie, frightened and frightening moan.
"If the teniente steps forward, he will be safe. If I call my men to find him, many of you will probably be killed, including the teniente."
Ramage felt like giggling. Creating a hundred men in the bushes by a quirk of his imagination and a flick of his tongue was great fun; like this it would be easy to manoeuvre armies.
Still there was no movement.
Ramage moved a step forward and gestured with his pistols to the middle of the three leaders, cocking each one, the twin clicks loud, sharp and ominous.
"Is the teniente with you?"
"Si señor."
"Oh, he just lacks cojones, eh?"
"Si señor - no! No, señor!"
Ramage conjured up a bloodcurdling laugh.
"He soon will, if he doesn't step forward!"
With that he saw men moving aside and a tall, slim man walked to the head of the column. He stopped before he was abreast of the three leaders and stared at Ramage.
"Who are you?" he demanded querulously in Spanish.
Ramage turned to Jackson and said in English: "Remove his sword. Don't be too gentle."
The Lieutenant protested in the peevish voice of a shrewish young wife. He p
rotested but, Ramage noted, not too much.
As soon as Jackson was holding the sword, Ramage said to the Spaniard: "Tell your men to lay down their arms."
He did so with remarkable alacrity as Ramage watched warily. Muskets came from shoulders and were put on the ground. Other weapons, which he could not recognize in the dim light, were dropped.
"Tell the slaves to stand still and the soldiers to walk forward and stand ten paces behind me."
As the Lieutenant gave the order Ramage stepped back off the track and, led by the three in front, the soldiers began walking.
Suddenly there was an urgent, high whistling noise and as Ramage jumped back, startled, there was a flash and bang of a pistol going off almost beside him and something snakelike writhed for a moment on the ground in front of him.
A few feet away, among the group of soldiers, there was a dreadful gurgling and Ramage realized it came from a soldier lying on the ground, a long stick-like object clutched in one hand. Then, with his ears ringing from the sound of the shot and dazzled for a moment by the flash, he saw that Jackson had fired. The whistling had come from the tail of a whip wielded by the Spanish soldier and intended to strike him down.
"Stand still," he shouted in Spanish. "No one move, or you all die!"
What a splendidly melodramatic language is Spanish, he thought to himself as he called in English down the track: "Mr Bowen - there's work for you here."
Then, realizing he was needlessly handling everything with only Jackson's help, he said briskly: "Tritons! Take the soldiers prisoner!"
As the seamen rustled from the shrubs he called to the slaves to stand still.
Five minutes later, with it getting lighter every second, the Lieutenant was standing to one side with Jackson behind him on guard, a pistol in each hand. The Spanish soldiers were in single file, each man tied to the next by a rope from one ankle. The slaves were in a group, chatting excitedly.
Bowen walked up, wiping his hands on a cloth.
"It's no good, sir, he's dead."
"Too bad," Ramage said, remembering the whistle of the whip and trying to guess what it would have done to him if the thick tail had hit him. He walked back to the dead man and picked up the whip.
It was the vilest thing Ramage had ever seen, designed as an instrument of torture, a means of punishment, a weapon. One heavy blow could cut a man almost in half. The whole whip was made of finely plaited leather; the handle, some five feet long, was as thick and rigid as a broom handle and then tapered to the tail, which was at least eight feet long, and little thicker at the tip than a piece of thin codline.
He loosened the dead man's grip, picked up the whip and found he was trembling with rage as he remembered the slave Roberto describing how the teniente sent for a slave if none was due to be flogged for punishment. He heard the echo of the teniente's querulous voice a few minutes ago. He remembered the teniente's reluctance to leave the anonymity and safety of the column and come to the front and accept his task as leader.
Bowen sensed his rage, gestured at the whip and said quietly: "It's a habit that's catching, sir."
Ramage pitched the whip away.
"Thank you," he muttered, and started walking back to the camp, calling orders to the corporal for bringing in the prisoners and slaves and burying the dead man.
Back at the camp he washed and shaved and had breakfast alone. The whip episode had left him in a fury. He imagined soldiers whipping slaves out of sheer boredom, or for slight infractions. The Navy's cat-o'-nine-tails was hardly a toy but it was used for punishment only in specific circumstances. Only the captain of a ship - or a court-martial - could order its use. There were some bad captains - like Pigot of the Hermione, who was so addicted to the cat his crew mutinied and murdered him - but such men were rare, and held in contempt by their fellow captains.
By comparison to these whips, the cat-o'-nine-tails was a bundle of shopkeeper's string; by comparison a flogging round the Fleet - the harshest sentence, apart from death, that a court could award - was merely painful. With this whip the lowest soldier could, with one or two blows delivered as a whimsy, punish a man as severely as a naval court-martial. With three or four blows he could kill, and from what Roberto had said, he was only blamed because it meant a slave less to work.
Ramage was not looking forward to interrogating the contemptible teniente, who was being guarded by the inevitable quartet of Jackson, Stafford, Rossi and Maxton. He had thought some time ago that he might be accused of favouritism, because he often gave them special tasks, but the quartet was popular among the men. They had been with him in so many situations, ranging from the desperate to the bizarre, that each knew how the other's mind worked. In emergencies this saved valuable seconds.
Ramage tucked a pistol in his belt, jammed his hat on and strode across the coarse grass and prickly pear to the provisions dump, where Jackson had the prisoner. The sun was getting heat in it now and the glare made him frown. The dry air reminded him of the smell of hay.
He found the four seamen standing round the Lieutenant, who was sitting on a tree stump the picture of petulant dejection. At Ramage's approach he tried to stand up, but Ramage told him to remain seated - he wanted to avoid any of the usual polite formalities.
"Your name?"
"Teniente Jaime Colon Benitez."
"Your regiment?"
"The first battalion of the Regiment of Aragon."
"What are you doing on this island?"
"Commanding a platoon of men."
"Obviously. What were your orders?"
"They are secret," Colon said contemptuously, as if while sitting on the tree stump he had recovered his courage.
"Very well," Ramage said, apparently accepting the reply. "Where is the headquarters of your regiment?"
"San Juan - at El Morro."
"The rest of your battalion is stationed in the fortress?"
"Yes. A few platoons such as mine are detached."
"When did you arrive here at Culebra?"
"Three weeks ago."
"With your orders?"
"With my orders."
"Since which time you have dug graves."
"Graves? How absurd!" Colon was contemptuous again, as though the word summoned up thoughts of tradesmen and other things with which no one of Colon's breeding would associate but which an Englishman like Ramage could not understand.
"Trenches, then."
"I'm not prepared to discuss it."
"Of course not," Ramage said easily. "Because of the nature of your orders."
"Precisely. They are secret."
"But I can find them at your quarters - the house in the village - and read them."
"Oh no you can't!" Colon exclaimed triumphantly. "They were verbal. The Colonel was most emphatic that nothing was put in writing. Because of the need for secrecy," he added, his voice dropping conspiratorially.
"Ah yes," Ramage said sympathetically. "It is dangerous to confide matters of such secrecy to paper."
"It certainly is!"
"Very well. Let me see now, I want to make sure I have all your details correct."
He repeated the man's name, regiment, and the fact he was based at El Morro, in San Juan.
Colon nodded and said: "That is correct. You speak Spanish very well - with the accent of Castile."
Ramage inclined his head in acknowledgment, and then said: "My apologies: there are one or two other details I need. Then no more questions."
"I will do my best to accommodate you," Colon said airily.
"Thank you. When is the next ship due with provisions from Puerto Rico?"
"I can't tell you that."
Ramage nodded his head regretfully. "Now, the last question: of the trenches you have dug, which is in the prettiest position - the most tranquil?"
"What an absurd question!"
"But important," Ramage said gently.
"Well, I don't really know. None is in what a civilized person would call an arbour."
> "Nevertheless, you must express a preference."
"Well, I haven't one, I hate them all," Colon said impatiently, as though bored with trenches as a topic of conversation.
"I must press you to answer," Ramage said, with a slight edge to his voice. "Just one."
"No! Not even one."
"Well then," Ramage said, in a more reasonable voice, "may I ask which place in the whole island you regard as the most tranquil, trench or no trench?"
Colon gave a contemptuous wave with his hand. "The whole place is ghastly; I hate it."
He stamped his foot and said almost hysterically, "I hate it! I hate Puerto Rico! I hate the Tropics!"
"Do you?" Ramage said sympathetically. "Well now, you are putting me in a difficult position. I wish you'd just tell me of a tranquil place for a trench."
"Do be quiet about trenches!" Colon said peevishly.
"Graves, then," Ramage said.
Colon's eyes opened wide. "I don't like the way you said that!"
'"Graves'?" Ramage repeated with feigned surprise, shaking his head. "What's wrong with that?"
"You said it in a threatening manner."
"You can't accuse me of threatening you," Ramage said in a hurt voice, "I'm trying to arrange that everything is as you would wish it for your removal."
"My removal?"
"A polite euphemism for death," Ramage said flatly, and Colon fainted.
"Quick," Ramage said to Jackson. "Have you a piece of line or a belt? I want a garrotte."
" 'Ere," Stafford said, holding out a length of cord. "Can I be carrotter, sir?"
"There'll be no garrotting as such, but you can pretend. Tie a knot in one end and keep running it through your fingers. Look fierce!"
"Aye aye, sir."
"Look," Rossi said, taking the line expertly and tying one end in the form of an eye. "Put your left wrist in there. Now - the line goes over the head of the victim; up comes your left wrist; a jerk back hard and upwards with the right hand, so; knee in the back, like thees, as you jerk; and -"
"Rossi!" Ramage said, grinning at the Italian's professionalism and enthusiasm, "give it back to Stafford, he's coming round."
Colon moaned weakly and Ramage signalled to Jackson and Rossi, who lifted the man up, shook him and sat him back on the tree stump.